


Bad Places

by DiscordantWords



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 18:22:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscordantWords/pseuds/DiscordantWords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hallucinogens and haunted houses. Fugitives and fugue states. The alliteration stops here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Places

Scully was asleep in the passenger seat, headlights occasionally splashing across her face. Occasionally she shifted in her seat, made a small sound, stretched, but her eyes did not open.

She'd always been a heavy sleeper. 

He kept his hands on the wheel, occasionally darting anxious glances into the rear view mirror. From time to time headlights would appear and his stomach clenched, but they would pass by without incident-- a young family in a minivan, a battered looking pickup truck, a semi truck with windows rolled down and the Ramones blaring on the radio. 

No one paid them any attention, a road weary man, a sleeping woman and a ghost in an SUV on a desolate stretch of road. 

He'd tried ignoring Krycek at first, thought that he'd fade away in disgust as they went further and further beyond the point of no return. But instead the ghost sat quietly in the back seat, a strangely self-satisfied little smile quirked on his lips.

The specter did not speak, and for that Mulder was grateful. 

Scully shifted in her seat again, and he glanced over at her. In sleep she looked relatively untroubled, admittedly unusual for a woman who had just organized and executed a jail break, but, then again, she'd always been a bit unusual. 

It's why he liked her. 

Unusual as she may be, however, he did not doubt that she'd start harboring some serious doubts about his frame of mind if he mentioned that he occasionally had full fledged conversations with dead men. 

The tableau was familiar; she asleep in the passenger seat, he with his hands on the wheel, the unending highway ahead, although they'd never before had wolves snarling and snapping at their heels. 

He glanced again at Krycek, mute and smiling in the back seat, and hoped that he hadn't damned them both by not fleeing for the border when he'd had the chance. 

In their more mundane travels, they would sometimes trade ghost stories to stay awake on stretches of dark highway. He always tried to make her jump, but more often than not she'd come back with some insidious, hair-raising tale, the kind of story only a woman who'd once been a child surrounded by men of the sea could tell.

It had been a long time since he'd heard Scully tell a ghost story. He doubted she'd ever tell him another one. Certain things lost their appeal when you'd been half a ghost yourself. 

They'd left New Mexico in predawn light, driven northwest into Nevada, stopping only occasionally to stretch their legs and for one nerve-wracking pit stop at a rest station where they'd emerged with a sack of fast food burgers and the dizzying sickening sensation that all eyes had been upon them. 

But no one followed.

When they crossed the Nevada border, he'd hesitated before bypassing Las Vegas. There was something to be said for hiding in plain sight, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to hold himself together in that sun drenched city of sin. The sight of too many other people had begun to make him uneasy. 

He couldn't help but wonder which ones were still people.

They drove. The sun sank into the desert and Krycek tapped a noiseless beat on the legs of his jeans in the back seat. 

His life stretched out in front of him, as winding and uncertain as the highway. When he'd turned twenty five he'd opened a bottle of scotch, his father's favorite brand, and finished it off, toasting the fact that his sister had officially been out of his life for longer than she'd been in it. He'd awakened the next morning on the floor of his apartment, his head still swimming, and had scraped himself off of the ground and gone to work in the suit he'd worn the day before. No one had said a word about his unshaven face, his rumpled countenance. He'd already developed something of a reputation.

Scully had once flown across the country, driven through the scorching desert, fled bees and helicopters with him through waving stalks of corn, caught a red-eye flight home to make it to work, all without changing her suit or combing her hair or presumably even brushing her teeth. He'd tried to kiss her anyway. She'd almost let him. 

They stopped at a motel, a nondescript row of wooden doors with peeling paint and actual keys instead of key cards. He parked the SUV between two semi trucks and held the door for Scully. 

"No," he said to Krycek, shutting the door in his face. 

"No?" Scully turned towards him, exhaustion etched on her face. Her hair was mussed. He was still not used to the length. 

He forced a smile, gestured to the floor. "No cockroaches this time."

She smiled back, a weary smile but a genuine one.

They had talked during their first long hours on the road, their huddled uncertain night in the first motel room. Talk about not losing faith, about fighting the good fight, about persevering in the face of uncertainty. Broad, sweeping statements, and it was easy to fake bravery, so easy to sound like he knew what he was doing. 

Easy to avoid the last wisp of poisonous smoke that a withered husk had blown in their direction. Easy to think they might stand a chance in hell of saving the world as two fugitives, when they'd been unable to do so with the power of the US government behind them. 

She had not once asked him for a plan, not once pushed for answers. He had thrown away their only chance at escaping the country for an opportunity to converse with a madman. He knew it was only a matter of time before she reminded him that he had gotten her into this mess. She'd give him room, give him space, give him time, but eventually she'd ask for accountability. 

He'd expect nothing less.

She put their bags on the bed, the ones she'd packed before swooping in to rescue him at the eleventh hour. She'd planned well, his Scully. She always had. 

"Now is as good a time as any," she told him. 

He sighed, nodded. They'd put it off as long as they could, past the point of common sense. But he hadn’t quite gotten his fill of the sight of her. 

His life had been unrecognizable for some time, and he did not relish the thought of turning her into a stranger as well. 

*

She stood with her head over the sink and let him massage the dye into her scalp, his palms stained brown, dark rivulets trickling down his forearms. 

He brushed his thumb over the small scar at the base of her neck and she sighed, turned to look at him, her hair thick and wet with dye. He dabbed at her hairline with a scratchy towel, mopped at the halo stained around her pale face. 

He steadfastly avoided looking in the mirror, did not want to see his own haunted eyes and hollow cheeks under fluorescent lights. 

When it was his turn he gave her a rueful smile as she scrubbed damp hands into his hair, the air in the small bathroom space redolent with bleach. 

"Your pupils are dilated," she said, her face slipping into concern. 

"The light is in my eyes," he squinted, looked away. 

Krycek stood in the bathroom doorway, smirking. Mulder reached out, slammed the door in his face.

She blinked at him. "Mulder, what--" 

He grabbed her, silenced her with a rough kiss. He could taste salt on her skin but did not know if they were her tears or his own. They clung to each other in the steam of the shower, dye pooling at their feet. 

Later, he fell asleep with her newly dark hair tickling his chin, thinking that he'd had a sister and lost her, that he'd had parents and lost them both, that he'd had a job and lost it, that he'd had a son and lost him, that he'd had his life and lost it. 

*

"Whoa," Byers said.

Mulder opened his eyes, saw dust motes dancing in the sunlight that peeked through dirty windows. The bed sheets were tangled around his legs, the space next to him empty. 

They stood at his bedside, looking down with expressions of mingled pity and amusement. He had seen this sight from countless hospital beds, but it had never made him quite so sad. 

"You look like a drug dealer," Langly said.

"So Mulder, tell me. Do blondes really have more fun?" Frohike smirked, tugged on his leather vest. 

"Is this what it's like to lose my mind?" Mulder groaned, sitting up, rubbing his face, running one hand through his curiously stiff hair. 

"You know why we're here," Byers said. 

"You should've gotten out while you had the chance," Frohike sounded sad. 

He stood up, moved through them, winced as he looked at his bright head in the mirror, tried not to notice the fading bruises on his chest and arms. 

He heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps approaching from outside, felt his muscles clench in an involuntary fight or flight response. 

There had been months on the road alone, countless mornings where he'd startle awake from uneasy sleep and find only empty bed next to him and the threat of discovery hanging over him. It would be too easy to think of his imprisonment and escape as a terrible dream, only just barely salvaged from a nightmare by Scully Scully Scully, finally back by his side. A bad dream or a good dream, but a dream nonetheless.

But there was a small, dark-haired woman in sunglasses and overalls standing in the doorway, holding two cups of coffee and a plastic bag. He'd know her anywhere.

Frohike looked at Mulder, shrugged. "Still hot." 

"Not one word," Scully said, kicking the door shut behind her. The Gunmen disappeared like wisps of smoke around her, if they had ever really been there at all. 

He nodded, fidgeted, couldn't help himself. "Out milking the cows?" 

"The point," she said, digging a bagel out of the plastic bag and taking a bite. "Of a disguise is to render oneself unrecognizable." 

He held his hand out wordlessly for one of the coffees, blew on the hot surface. 

"Which reminds me," she smiled.

"Oh no," he said. 

She held up a Hawaiian shirt, garish red and yellow, festooned with colorful parrots. "It goes with the hair." 

*

"This will go one of two ways," he said later as they sat on the edge of the bed with a map spread out between them. 

"I think you should grow a goatee," she said, cocking her head. "Mulder would never grow a goatee." 

"I won't willingly let you turn me into my own evil twin," he said.

She smiled at him, but it did not reach her eyes. She smoothed the edge of the map. "What two ways?" 

"They'll plaster our names and faces on every newspaper and television in the country. There will be some kind of trumped up charges attached, the kind that'll make people angry. We'll have bright red targets painted to our backs anywhere we go." 

She met his eyes, her face neutral, her gaze level. "And the second?" 

"They don't say a word. They come after us themselves. When they find us, it will be over fast. No one will ever even know to ask questions." 

He watched her consider this, watched her steady face, saw the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. The past year had dealt heavy damage to the mask she sometimes wore; he found it easier and easier to see through the cracks. 

"Fortunately," he said, and smiled, "I am a deeply paranoid man." 

He tapped his finger on the map. 

*

The glare of the morning sun made his head pound so she took the first turn at the wheel. Shimmering heat waves rose off of black asphalt. Desert stretched for miles all around.

"Good place to hide a body," he murmured.

She smirked. "Got anyone in mind?"

"Several." 

He turned his head, watched the sand and scrub brush fly by. All of the clouds looked like UFOs. 

*

He was a slight man, slim and nondescript in a black t-shirt and jeans. He sat with his back against the wall in a half-empty Starbucks, seemingly engrossed in an issue of The Lone Gunman. 

"Always nice to meet a fellow subscriber," Mulder said.

"The posthumous issue," he said, glancing up in surprise. "You a believer?"

"So to speak." 

His eyes flicked uncertainly over Mulder's face, then to his stiff blonde hair, then back to the face. His eyes widened.

"You're him," he said. "Shit, you're tall." 

"What's your name?" Mulder asked, sitting down. 

"Joh-- Java. Java Bean."

Mulder raised both eyebrows, glanced around the coffee shop. 

The other man gave a nervous grin. "I know, right? I should be the star of my own barista-themed comic book." 

"Good luck with that," Mulder said.

"Sorry. I, yeah. Look, I didn't actually think you'd show up, you know? I've been doing this for a year. Come here every day from three to four, order a drink, read the paper, check comes in the mail." 

"Do you have it?"

Bean tapped a canvas bag by his feet. "I bring it every freakin' day, man. Even when I had the flu." 

Mulder bent down, lifted the bag onto the table. He peeked inside, saw manila envelopes, folders. 

"In the folder is a list of properties. They're all in different names. No one should be able to find a discernable link between them. If one gets too hot, move on to the next one." Bean gave him a small smile, a quick nervous flash of teeth. "There's also a key to a storage unit six miles from here. Number B-5." His voice dropped. "Manila envelope's got cash, safety deposit box key for a bank in Kansas City, three sets of identification to get you started." 

"And how do I know you won't be making a phone call with all of this information as soon as I turn my back?"

"You gotta trust someone, man," Bean said. "You've got a following on the net, you know? A lot of us really believe in what you do. And a lot of us loved this stupid magazine, too, and aren't buying the government's lies about what happened to those guys." 

"There's only one person I trust," Mulder said, standing up. The other man looked uncertainly at him. "But thank you." 

He took the bag, turned away. 

Scully had kept the car idling in the lot. He could see the back of her dark head, darting furtive glances at the rear view mirror, looking for trouble. 

He knocked on the glass window, smiled when she rolled it down and greeted him with a blast of chill air conditioning. 

"Vanilla, extra whipped cream," he said, handing her a Styrofoam cup. 

"Thanks for the diabetic coma," she smiled, took the cup. It left a faint whipped cream line on her upper lip when she sipped. 

"Head north," he said. "Six miles." 

"Do you trust him?" 

Mulder glanced in the rear view mirror, saw only an empty back seat. He met her eyes, did not answer.

*

The hinges on the storage unit squealed as Mulder lifted the door. Scully stepped inside, lifted a dusty tarp, coughed. 

"There's a joke here somewhere," Mulder said, looking at the white Bronco. 

She tilted her head at him in that exasperated way she sometimes had, leaned in the window and turned the key. The engine chugged to life. 

"We're in business," Mulder said. 

They left their black SUV under the tarp in its place, pulled back onto the highway. 

"Which way?" 

He looked down at the list of addresses in his lap, then glanced behind him. Krycek had rejoined them, sitting in the back seat, smiling. 

"East." 

*

Three hours later he was on his knees in a roadside rest stop, upending his breakfast into a filthy toilet bowl. He could feel beads of sweat clinging to his forehead, running down his back. 

He shut his eyes, leaned his head against the sticky wall, groaned. When he opened them again, he was back in his cell. 

"You're a guilty man," the guard said, and the club came down. 

"Scully," he breathed into the cold floor. 

Then there were cool fingers on the back of his neck, sliding around to cup his fevered face. He opened his eyes, met hers. Her hair was dark, but her concern was familiar, like a soothing balm. 

"How long have you been like this?" she asked. 

He shook his head, felt another wave of vertigo, slipped sideways in her arms. 

"Can you stand?" 

He did, leaning heavily on her. Together, they staggered towards the line of metal sinks and cloudy mirrors. She turned the faucet, dabbed cool water on his face. He shut his eyes gratefully. 

"How long?" she asked him again.

"I don't--" 

"Dammit, Mulder." She shut off the faucet, stepped back from him, folded her arms. "I've been watching you. You're looking at things that aren't there. In the car, in the hotel--" 

He blinked, and her angry, worried face was gone, replaced by the shadow shrouded face of his jailer. 

"You've failed," the guard told him, holding the club but not swinging it. "Say it." 

"I've failed," Mulder groaned in agreement. 

The guard swung his arm, and Mulder flinched, but he stopped just short of hitting him. Instead, he stepped back and rapped on the steel door, and Krycek moved in, holding a syringe. 

Mulder tensed, hands tightened into fists. 

"You're dead, you're dead, you're dead, you can't hurt--"

The needle pierced the skin at his left temple, and he lashed out, backpedaling, butting up against the cold stone wall. 

"Mulder." 

Her voice brought him back, into the dim, foul-smelling bathroom. He looked down at clenched fists, let them relax. The anger he had seen on her face was gone, replaced by something that looked like blind panic. 

"I have to get you to a hospital," she said. 

"No," he said, grabbing her arm. "No. That's what they want. This-- I think this is a failsafe." 

The door swung open, sending bright sunlight cascading in. A woman stood, uncertainly clutching the hand of a small boy. She took them in-- a tired, dark-haired woman in dirty overalls and a disheveled man with spiky blond hair and a Hawaiian shirt, hunched together over the bathroom sink, and took a startled step back.

"Occupied," Scully snapped. 

The woman took her child's hand and yanked him away, the door swinging shut behind them. 

"If you take me to a hospital they'll kill us both," he said, and as he stood there he saw it happen, saw a neat bullet hole sprout in the center of her forehead, saw her eyes open wide and wink out.

"We have to get out of here," she murmured, gentler now, her hands cupping his face, tilting his head so she could get a better look at his pupils while he miserably tried not to breathe on her. 

I love you, he tried to say, I never meant for any of this to happen, all I ever wanted was to come home to you. She was leading him, blinking and unsteady, out into the daylight, and his lips couldn't seem to form the words. 

*

The desert melted into farmland as he listed against the Bronco's passenger window. The sun rose, set, casting the world into pinks and reds. He watched rows of corn crops ignite, sending apocalyptic flames licking at the very heavens, saw smoke blowing from the mouth of the devil himself. 

She stopped only for gas and coffee refills, gave him bottle after bottle of water to drink. 

He drank water and spilled some of it and took a halfhearted swing at Krycek in the back seat, but the other man just laughed and faded away. Samantha was calling for help, yelling his name, and aliens had her and then Roche had her and then that cigarette smoking bastard had her but in the end did it matter which one? She was dead all the same, and so was he. 

"I'm a guilty man," he said to no one in particular. 

One of her hands left the wheel, crept across his knee, clutched his own chilled fingers. "Hold on," she told him. "You're going to be all right." 

*

The house was set back from the road, peeling paint and old windows, a sagging porch and a lawn that was mostly crab grass but freshly mowed. The wheels crunched over gravel, and the dread seemed to swell within him the closer they got. 

"This place gives me the heebie jeebies," Frohike said from the back seat. 

"Bad mojo, Mulder," Langly agreed. 

"You shouldn't go in there," Byers advised. "This is a bad place." 

Scully pulled the truck behind the house, well hidden from the road. She killed the engine, turned to look at him. Her face was tired, drawn, pale under unnaturally dark hair. 

"Mulder?" she asked gently. 

"I ain't afraid of no ghost," he said, and pushed his way out of the car and into the gathering dusk. 

The little key turned the lock, and they stepped into a dusty kitchen, her arm slung around his waist, he leaning heavily on her shoulder. For a moment he saw malevolent red eyes in the darkness, but then he blinked and they dissolved like smoke. 

Exhaustion made them careless. She left him leaning against an ancient refrigerator, hurried down the hall. He heard the creak of floorboards, the crinkle of plastic. Then she was back, pulling him down the hallway, gently pushing him down onto a bed that smelled of mothballs but was blessedly soft. 

She lay down next to him, cool fingers probing his wrist for his heart rate. She made a dissatisfied noise in the back of her throat, touched his forehead. 

"I don't have anything to give you," she whispered.

He shook his head, tried to smile, grimaced instead. The walls were made of faces. 

"Whatever they gave you, it's slow acting," she said, sitting up against the headboard, stroking her hand up and down his arm. 

"Before the verdict," he said into the pillow. "Someone with a needle." 

"When did you start seeing things?"

He thought of Krycek, opening the door at Mount Weather, advising him in his cell. It didn't fit. 

His mouth felt dry, his head strangely light. 

"Stay with me," she said, shook him gently. 

"The whole time." 

"The whole time," she echoed, her voice perplexed.

He shut his eyes and drifted away, could feel nervousness radiating off of her like an electrical current, wanted to tell her not to worry, that this was nothing like dying, he would know. 

*

But of course it was exactly like dying, because he opened his eyes again in a coffin, the satin liner torn to bits by frantic fingers. Scully, he tried to say, you've made another mistake, don't bury me again, I can't come back twice. 

When he lifted his hands to his face, the fingertips were stained with blood, and as he watched his palms began to wither and crack. Maggots squirmed on his skin, in his skin, and he tore at his moldering suit, struggled to get free. 

His hand brushed something unfamiliar and he strained to look down, saw his own gray skin and the gruesome stitching of the Y-incision. Saw Scully standing over him in her scrubs and a white mask, tears streaming down her face as she removed his heart. 

He sat up, suddenly surprised by mobility, and looked around his apartment, a coffin where his couch should be. He climbed out, like some vampiric cliche, and stood blinking in the familiar surroundings. Severed alien heads bobbed in the burbling fish tank, staring with blank black eyes. 

"Scully," he said, his voice hoarse. He felt naked without her by his side. 

There were voices, muffled, coming from his bedroom. He stepped around a pile of broken glass and moved down the hallway. The walls dripped with yellow goo, strangely familiar, and he reached out to touch it before moving on. It clung to his fingers in viscous strands.

He pushed open the bedroom door and entered a room he'd never seen before, an airy living room with bay windows and cozy furniture. A young boy sat on the couch, slim knees drawn up under his chin, watching a black and white movie. A Christmas tree, redolent of fresh pine, claimed a place by the fireplace.

An exasperated sigh came from behind him, and Mulder whirled to see a woman he'd never laid eyes on before, plain-faced and motherly, warm. 

"Again?" she asked. 

The boy never turned, but Mulder heard his soft voice mouthing along the words, and then he himself was saying them too. 

The woman stepped around him without noticing him, went towards the television. She reached for the knob but paused, did not turn it off, gave the boy an affectionate and long-suffering look. 

Mulder moved forward as if pulled, needing to see the boy's face. On the screen, Plan 9 from Outer Space kept on rolling. 

"Will," the woman said, just as Mulder said "William." 

The television blinked off. 

The boy made a sound of protest, but the woman had already moved away from the television, was looking out the window. Snow was falling, blanketing the countryside. 

As Mulder watched, it turned to ash. 

He turned back, meaning to grab his son and run, but he was gone. There was no sign of life in the room. The glass in the bay windows was shattered, jagged. Fire licked at the darkened television set. The couch had been tipped over, the cheery country plaid fabric charred black. A vase of fresh flowers had tipped over, been trod on. Petals were ground into the soggy carpet. 

Around him, the house began to shake itself apart. 

Framed photos shuddered off of the walls, shattering on the floor. In the kitchen, a refrigerator tipped over, spilling rotten milk and vegetables. A child's drawing flapped free from the door, and Mulder grabbed it, took it in, all clumsy crayon lines, a dark haired girl floating out a window in a nightgown, caught in a Crayola yellow tractor beam. 

The crinkled paper ignited in his hand and he dropped it, hissing. 

"Scully," he called again, moving to the back door, yanking it open and staggering out into bloody snow. Behind him, the farmhouse dissolved, melted into the ground with a groan of burning timber. 

Animals were screaming in the barn, the air was thick with the scent of smoke and blood. There were tracks in the snow, unearthly, three-toed, heavy. 

"December," he said out loud, and the snow melted beneath his feet. 

He was on a dusty road, grass waving in a peaceful breeze, and he started running, his heart caught somewhere in his throat. Scully was at the end of this road, he knew, and he had to get there before something terrible happened, she was waiting for him. 

He ran, and ran, gasping for breath, his tie flapping over his shoulder, but he knew he'd be too late, too late this time and he'd come upon her mangled corpse and god help anyone standing nearby, god help him too, because he'd shoot first and ask questions later. Actually, fuck asking questions; he'd just keep on shooting until it was all over. 

He'd already started to grieve, already felt hollowed out, empty, before he rounded the corner and saw her standing on the porch of a ramshackle Victorian house at the end of a gravel driveway. The surprising, wonderfully welcome sight of her stunned him into brief immobility.

"Scully," he tried to say, but his mouth was dry, his voice hoarse, and the only sound that escaped him was a whisper. 

She was on the porch, looking out over a sloppily maintained lawn, wind ruffling her vivid hair. 

"Scully," he croaked, and started running again. 

Around her, the house seemed to throb like a malevolent heart, and he could see the door behind her swing open to reveal nothing but blackness within. The paint melted off of the porch in Dali-esque ribbons, puddling into the patchy grass. 

She turned away, stepped towards the door. Shadowy hands reached out to greet her. 

"No," he said, pushing faster, tasting copper in the back of his throat. The house seemed miles away. 

She twisted in the grasp of all those hands at the last second, eyes wide with fright. Her gaze locked on his and he heard her voice, loud and clear, before she was sucked into the blackness. "Mulder!"

"Scully!" this time he did yell, his voice forcing its way out of his scorched throat. He cleared the porch stairs in one leap and without thinking, without hesitating, flung himself into the dark after her. 

*

He woke up with chicken broth trickling down his throat, coughed, then reached greedily for the mug. His stomach rumbled. 

"Easy," she said, but there was a smile in that voice. He knew that voice, knew that smile. That was her bedside demeanor, the one only he ever got to experience. The one that told him he'd gone and scared her half to death again. 

He set the mug down on a nightstand, rubbed his unshaven face, reached back into his memory but found nothing but uneasy blackness. "What happened to me?"

"Without access to a lab or blood work, it's hard to say," she said, "If I had to guess, I'd say you were given a deliriant."

He shook his head, frowned. "Like LSD?"

She shrugged, "It doesn't make any sense, Mulder. Most hallucinogens and deliriants take effect within minutes to a few hours of dosage. You seemed fine."

He thought of his moonlight conversation with the Gunmen, of pissing in the wind. Had his mind created that? 

She was shaking her head. "I don't know of any drug that lies dormant in the system for days." 

"There is precedent for our government using weaponized hallucinogens," he said, licking his lips. His mouth felt dry, cottony. 

"Yes," she said. "But why now?"

He shook his head, troubled that he had no answer. "Where are we?"

"The part-time residence of one Phillip Gregory Phelps," she stood up from the bed, stretched. "That would be you, by the way." 

He looked around the sparsely furnished room. "I thought I had better taste than this." 

"One of the great tragedies in life, Mulder. Everyone thinks they have good taste. Most of them are wrong." 

Good humor danced in her eyes, a little smile touched her face, the kind of expression that begged explanation.

"What is it?"

She reached over to the nightstand, handed him a folded slip of paper. "This was on the kitchen table."

He unfolded the note, ran his finger over Frohike's sloppy handwriting.

Hope you like the new digs. Folks in town say it's haunted. Seemed right up your alley.

He smiled, more than a little touched, more than a little sad. 

"One of these days you'll have to tell me how you arranged all of this," she said, taking the note back from him. 

"With a little help from my friends," Mulder said, struggling to stand. His wrists ached, and he looked down, surprised to see faint bruising. 

She suddenly looked uncomfortable. "I had to--" 

"Oh, Scully, all you had to do was ask," he deflected, waggling his eyebrows. She rolled her eyes, swatted at him, but looked relieved all the same. 

There was running water but no electricity, and he stood under the showerhead while cold water pelted him and washed him clean of road grime and sweat. For a second, and only a second, he thought he saw blood spiraling down the drain. 

Scully was leaning against the vanity when he emerged, ducked her head to hide her concern when she handed him a towel. 

"Better?" she asked him, as he shook beads of water from his horrendous blond hair. 

"Things seem a little off," he confessed. 

"Only a little?" 

He smiled at that, she with her freshly dyed dark hair, he with his spiky surfer blond, the unfamiliar surroundings. 

"A lot off," he conceded. "But a little more than present circumstances call for." 

He dressed and followed her on shaky legs to the kitchen. 

"Haunted, huh?" he said as he sat down, rubbed his head. 

"So the note says." 

"Seen any evidence?"

"I've had my hands too full to worry about things that go bump in the night." 

"So things have gone bump in the night?"

She smiled, shook her head. "Only you. Falling out of bed." 

"Ah. That explains the bruise on my ass." 

She shut her eyes, smiled in her tight tired way that meant she was glad to have him back. She'd reeled in from one too many misadventures. 

"I have to go into town," she said.

He watched her leave, heard the Bronco roar to life and crunch its way back down the gravel driveway. He was on his feet again in seconds, pacing down the hallway, pushing doors open and peering into rooms. 

She had removed the plastic covering the furniture in the bedroom, living room, and kitchen, but had not touched any of the other rooms. Frohike, Langly and Byers had once walked these halls, had somehow hoodwinked some hapless real estate agent into selling them the place.

They'd done it across the country, at his request, had left him a trail of breadcrumbs to follow to safe ground. 

And he hadn't even known his friends were dead until he'd come home. He'd been cut off from everything, from all contact. He hadn't even dared send as much as an email after one disastrous exchange with Scully nearly cost them both their lives.

They'd gone to his funeral, but he hadn't returned the favor.

Scully had told him, once, in a better time, that Frohike had shown up drunk at her apartment in the middle of the night to mourn him when he'd been missing and presumed dead in New Mexico. That had touched him in a strangely profound way, one he'd been unable to put into words. It had happened so long ago he felt like he'd barely known her then, but she'd put her life on the line for him without hesitation, and had taken the time and care to brew coffee for and sober up his strange little friend. 

She hadn't asked for weirdness in her life, but she always opened up the door and accepted it when it knocked.

He wondered if being ill and possibly drugged had made him maudlin. 

The footsteps startled him, jerked him out of his own head. He turned around, cocked his head, looked down the hallway. He had not heard the Bronco return. 

"Scully?" he called cautiously. 

Silence answered. 

He stepped towards the source of the initial sound, moving slowly, wincing with every creaking floorboard. Instinct made him reach for his hip, although he hadn't carried a gun for some time. 

Footsteps. Light, agile, like a child. They skittered across the floor somewhere down the hall. A door slammed. 

"This is private property," he said. "You're trespassing." 

The hallway seemed to stretch on forever. He took cautious steps, all too aware that he was in unfamiliar surroundings, that he would be woefully ignorant of blind spots and hiding places. 

Up ahead, something thumped over onto the floor. 

Inexplicable dread pooled in his stomach. This place is a bad place, his brain announced, unbidden. 

At that moment, the fact that he fucking loves the scary stuff, had become a veritable encyclopedia on the bizarre, the paranormal, the truly freaky-deaky did not matter in the slightest. Fright had taken root in him, begun to beat with its own perverse heartbeat. 

Bad place. Don’t stay.

When they were kids, Samantha used to cringe away from a house in the neighborhood, a crumbling colonial affair with broken windows and crooked shutters that looked like jagged teeth. She'd shut her eyes and beg him to hold her hand and he'd tease and she'd whine and finally he'd just do it and they'd run, she with her eyes closed and he with his wide open, both eager to leave all that bad airspace behind. 

His heart threatened to gallop away from his chest. 

"Scully," he said, wielding her name like a talisman, turning away from the dark hallway and retreating to the kitchen. He sat down at the table, looked down at his hands. They trembled slightly. 

The air seemed to come alive with electricity. The hair on his arms stood at attention. 

He looked back down the hallway. His sister stood in the shadows, still clad in her nightgown and dark braids. Her skin was fish belly white, her eyes black. 

"Fox," she said, and smiled, held out her arms for him. 

He pushed back from the table and stumbled out the front door, blinking into the sunlight. The air was warm, fragrant with grasses. The countryside seemed beautiful, remote, benign. 

He looked behind him, back into the house, and saw nothing amiss. 

"Mulder?"

Her soft, concerned voice made him jump but just as quickly sent relief flooding through his system. She stood on the porch with a paper bag of groceries, her brow furrowed. He stepped forward, put his hands on her shoulders; his breath puffed against her forehead. 

"You don't look well," she said, leaning out of his shadow to study his face.

"I think the house is haunted." 

She gave him a long, level look, as though trying to gage him and finding herself curiously unable to do so. 

"I know how it sounds," he said finally.

Scully stepped towards the door, nudging him gently along with her. "Your system is still metabolizing whatever you were given, Mulder," she said. "It's not unheard of to still be feeling the effects of a hallucinogen after days--" 

He hesitated in the doorway, shivering, feeling goosebumps rise on the flesh of his arms. A glance at Scully told him that he was singularly affected. The look she gave him was a little impatient, a little curious. 

She thought he was pausing for effect, he realized. 

He thought of fog drenched haunted houses and Christmastime ghosts and gleefully murmured horror stories and dark basements and thought maybe he understood where she was coming from. 

He followed her into the house. The kitchen was just a kitchen. Nothing jumped out to say boo. 

"Okay?" she asked. 

He looked down the hall, saw only faded wallpaper and old carpeting. 

"Okay," he agreed. 

*

They were driving again, somewhere lost in time, wheels spinning on a nameless highway in the dark. Trees flashed by around them, the headlights carved through a thick fog. 

"Weird, isn't it?" he asked her, grinning a little. 

She cocked her head at him, the corners of her lips upturned ever so slightly. It was not quite a smile, but it hinted at one.

"Not coming from you," she said finally.

They studied each other, he feigning insult, she hiding that ghost of a smile. It was a familiar dance, and they knew their moves by heart. 

They had traded ghost stories as their rental car chewed up the miles of road between airport and small town. Hers had been, as always, simple, direct and chilling; a sad tale of a ghost ship on a lonely sea, of beacons in the foggy night. He had told his with a good deal more posturing, slipping into accents when the story called for it, always watching out of the corner of his eye, keeping tabs on that barely-there smile. 

If someone had asked when the tradition began, he would have answered that he simply did not remember, that it must have been born of long nights on the road shared between two people with a predilection for the weird. 

But he did remember the where and when of its origin, remembered precisely the goose bumps that had risen on his flesh when Scully had lifted her head from where it rested on the window, looked at him with sleepy eyes and said--

"You want to hear a ghost story?" 

She had a knack for storytelling. There was something in the deadly serious way she spoke, her voice like silk, the way she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees as if she were imparting a precious secret. When she got under his skin, it was difficult to pry her loose. And for a woman so staunchly disbelieving in all things paranormal, when she opened her mouth it was difficult to doubt a single thing she said. 

"You know," she said to him, her head lolling against headrest in her seat. She was struggling to stay awake, and he appreciated her effort. "I'm beginning to grow suspicious of how many of your stories feature some sort of ghostly specter on a deserted highway." 

He shrugged. "You work with what you have." 

"You're sort of going for the low-hanging fruit, though, aren't you?" She was smiling now, mischief on her face. "Depending so heavily on our surroundings to do the work for you."

"Come on," he said. "If you looked out your window and saw the lonely woman in white wailing in the moonlight--"

She swatted at him. "That's exactly what I'm talking about. Too much dependence on atmosphere and not nearly enough effort crafting the story." She settled back into her seat. "A good ghost story is insidious, Mulder. It gets under your skin without resorting to cheap tricks." 

He glanced over at her; her pale face swathed in shadows. He could not tell if she was still smiling. 

"I had no idea my storytelling ability was so wanting," he scoffed.

They passed under a streetlamp, and the light briefly flashed across her face. She was smiling, he saw. That small, blink-and-you-miss-it little curl of the lips.

"Your storytelling ability leans heavily on your ability to work in a loud noise and a BOO! at the end of every tale." 

"You always jump." 

She yawned, stretched her slim arms out in front of her. "Yes, I always jump. But being startled isn't the same thing as being scared. The truly scary movies didn't rely on a shriek of violins or a-- a black cat flung from the shadows at some hapless teenager." 

"And you're an expert on scary movies?" 

She smiled her enigmatic smile, looked away. 

The car hit a pothole, bounced. Fog swirled in the headlights.

"I can't see the road," he said, uneasiness blooming in the pit of his stomach. 

"Then pull over," she said, still looking out the window. 

"There's no shoulder. No visibility. It's not safe." 

"Nothing is safe." Her voice sounded strange.

He became aware of a smell rising in the car, an overwhelming odor of wet leaves and the faint, sickly sweet scent of decay. The smell of corpses in shallow graves. 

"Scully?" Her name, held out to ward off evil spirits. 

"Mulder," the thing next to him said, the voice like the rasp of old metal, like gears and nails, and it turned to look at him, wearing Scully's face. 

 

He lurched up in bed, gasping, and felt himself immediately stilled by a small cool hand on his fevered chest. 

She was alive and whole, curled next to him in the strange sparse bedroom they had taken refuge in. Her hand slid over his heart, lingered over the frantic pounding. She kissed his shoulder. 

"Mulder," she said, her voice unlike the rusty hinge sound of the creature in his dream. She was sleepy and mumbly and slurry, the weight of her body a comforting presence against his side. 

"Sorry," he said, and kissed her forehead.

"Bad dream?"

He could still see her face hanging loosely, like a mask that did not quite fit, poorly containing something much larger, could see her soft lips parting to reveal cavernous blackness. He shuddered. "Yeah. Vivid." 

She stroked his arm, her fingernails gently tracing against his skin. "It's the chemical, leaving your body." 

He shut his eyes, felt his heart begin to slow. 

The blankets rustled as she sat up, her warm comfort receding. She made a frustrated noise, paced across the room. "I hate this."

He rolled to look at her, blinking in the morning light.

"You don't realize how dependent you are on what you're used to until it's gone," she said, almost apologetic. "I want to run some tests. I want to know exactly what we're dealing with." 

"I think the worst is over," he said, and thought he sounded halfway convincing.

She smiled at his words, looked thoroughly unconvinced.

"Scully," he said gently, sitting up. 

She stepped closer to him, cupped his cheek in her palm. Her eyes were filled with tears and it frightened him to not know why. When she looked at him that way, adrift in emotion, he was reminded that for as many years as they had spent growing together, their forced absences had taken a toll. She'd had experiences he couldn't quantify, he'd had to do things she didn't know about. 

She'd always had a core of steel. But he'd left one woman behind to chase lights into the sky, and he couldn't quite shake the feeling that he'd returned to another. At some point he'd lost sight of his goal, his burning need for answers. They both had. They'd let each other become more important than the truth. 

He wondered what it said about his character that he didn't always think that was a bad thing. 

They were human. They deserved a little happiness. And they'd found it, however briefly. A few wonderful months together, a ray of sunlight in all that darkness.

He'd been ready to walk away from his lifelong quest when it had shown up and dragged him screaming back into the basement. 

"Mulder," she said, and he realized his long silence was worrying her. She had a little furrow in her brow, right between her eyes. 

How often had they held entire conversations in the silence between speaking each other's name? 

He reached for her, snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her back onto the bed, kissed her until they were both gasping. He seemed to have forgotten restraint, how to be gentle, had it beaten out of him in a dark jail cell he thought he'd never leave alive. When he reached out to her it was always tinged with desperation these days, as if each touch, each kiss might be the last. 

"Mulder," she breathed, her face flushed. Her hair fell down around her face in soft dark waves. 

"Scully," he said, his lips turning up in a smile. 

He rolled over, pinning her beneath him, buried his hands in her hair. She nipped the side of his neck and he groaned. The uneasy remains of his nightmare fell away, leaving only warmth and light.

You're all I have left, he wanted to say. Instead he said her name, and she answered with his own. 

*

"We need a plan," she said later. 

He looked up at the ceiling, did not speak. There were cobwebs in the corners. 

"Is it not enough to ride off into the sunset?" he asked wryly.

She lifted her head, fixed him with a look.

He smiled, sighed, ran his hand fondly through her hair. "I've missed you, Scully." 

She let out a little chuff of breath, the kind that let him know she was mildly amused but determined to stay serious. He knew from experience that this was a battle she usually won. 

"Right now, staying alive is my plan." 

She sighed again, this time more frustrated than amused. But when she spoke her voice was soft. "Where did you go? When you were gone?" 

He'd lain in lonely motel beds, in a sleeping bag under the stars, on a hard cot in Gibson's trailer, sweating in the desert heat, and thought about future conversations with his son. 

"You know, once your mom tried to get a rise out of me by pretending to eat a cricket." 

He'd teach him baseball, dress him as Elvis for Halloween, rehearse for talent shows. He'd go to parent teacher conferences and feign concern when told his son displayed a smart mouth and a lack of respect for authority. 

He had not been surprised to return and find that his son was gone. Children had a tendency to slip through his fingers like sand. 

He had not been angry. It had clawed at him, gutted him, left him biting his hands to muffle his grief in the night. But he had not been angry. It was impossible to be angry when he was moving willingly towards his own death. If anything, the loss of his son was one less thing tethering him to this doomed world. 

William would know love. Not the slightly insane, offbeat, desperate love that his biological parents would have given him, but a stable, warm family environment. He would be safe, and protected, and cared for, and when the end of the world came he'd wink out with the rest of them, never knowing that before he was a boy he'd been a miracle. 

He could not tell Scully this. Instead he leaned up on one elbow, met her eyes. "I been everywhere, man." 

She shut her eyes, rolled away, stood up. 

He opened his mouth to speak, to apologize, but she'd already left the room. 

*

He heard the shower running as he made his way down the hall, thought he heard her sharp intake of breath as she stepped into cold water. He leaned his forehead against the door. 

"Scully," he said. "You should know better than anyone that flippancy is my default reaction to dire situations." 

She did not answer him. 

He sighed, pushed the bathroom door open with a halfhearted knock. 

"Scully?" 

He heard nothing but streaming water. She'd been angry at him in the past but did not ordinarily resort to the silent treatment. 

"Scully." He reached out a tentative hand for the shower curtain, tugged it gently aside.

The smell assaulted him first, and he gagged, his eyes watering. 

The bathtub was filled with corpses. They were piled high, one atop the other, a grotesque pile. For a moment he was reminded absurdly of piling bodies atop one another to climb out of a hole in a Florida forest, but they were anonymous mummies and these... these were...

He recognized them. 

His father, gray skinned and glassy eyed, blood dripping from a neat round bullet hole. His mother, an appalled look on her ordinarily composed face, y-incision stitched in Scully's neat hand upon her body. His sister, eight years old and in her nightgown.

Samantha rolled white eyes towards him, pointed one decomposing finger. "You said I could watch the movie." 

He put his hand to his mouth, staggered back. Frohike. Langly. Byers. Diana Fowley. Jerry Lamana. Reggie Perdue. The man he'd only ever known as Deep Throat. They looked at him with blank, accusing eyes as the icy water washed over their graying bodies. 

He lurched backward, bumping against the doorframe as he retreated into the hallway. The world spun around him. 

"Mulder?" 

He whirled around. She stood in the hallway, fresh towels in her arms, regarding him with a questioning expression. 

He turned back towards the bathroom. The water had shut off. 

"What--" he said, moving quickly to the tub, yanking the curtain aside. It was empty. Clean. Pristine. Dry. 

"What?" she echoed, setting the towels down on the counter and approaching the tub, looking down at the clean white surface. 

"Scully, either I'm going crazy or this house is haunted." 

The expression on her face told him which option was more likely. She opened her mouth to say something about hallucinogens, but he didn't hear her. 

He was already out the front door.


End file.
